Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(UK Und.) an innkeeper; a hotel-keeper.

1674		Head Canting Academy (2nd edn).
c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew.
1707		J. Shirley Triumph of Wit n.p.: bluffer, host.
1719		A. Smith Lives of Most Notorious Highway-men, etc. (1926) 203: Bluffer, a host, inn-keeper, or victualler; to look bluff, to look big, or like bull-beef.
1725		New Canting Dict. n.p.: bluffer c. a Host, Inn-keeper or Victualler.
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict.
c.1750–1882		B.M. Carew Life and Adventures.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1836		W.H. Smith ‘The Thieves’s Chaunt’ in Farmer Musa Pedestris (1896) 121: For she never lushes dog’s-soup or lap, / But she loves my cousin the bluffer’s tap.
1848		Flash Dict. in Sinks of London Laid Open 99: Bluffer, an impudent imposing fellow of an inn-keeper.
c.1850		Duncombe New and Improved Flash Dict.
1859		Matsell Vocabulum 13: bluffer The landlord of a hotel.
1881		Trumble Sl. Dict. (1890).
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 10: Bluffer, a hotel landlord.
1903		S. Clapin New Dict. Americanisms.